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Widespread adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM) is firmly on policy agenda in several countries. Despite emphasis on governments' ambitions for industry-wide BIM adoption, there is scant understanding about what construction firms need to do regarding training provision and how to do that to meet policy goals. There is, therefore, little evidence of how construction companies have tackled this challenge internally and on projects in existing studies. Through a qualitative research approach and case studies of two leading UK construction companies, this paper describes the different strategies that construction companies adopt to provide the requisite skills and training for their workforce and their project supplier network partners to successfully support and sustain the implementation of BIM. The findings show that successful main contractors employed an "in-house" training strategy at intra-organizational level and a "growing together" approach for their project supplier network partners. In providing BIM training, these firms tackled problems of heterogeneity in workforce digital literacy and competencies, a lack of attention to soft skills, and a lack of understanding of BIM benefits using tailored and role-specific training. These insights contribute to the growing literature on BIM training, complementing the existing literature that focuses mainly on BIM training through education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing shortages and construction delays characterize the current UK housing crisis, and housing need is not met. Modern methods of construction (MMC) are put forward as a solution to ensure quicker, safer, and greener delivery of new homes and are supported by the government, especially in the social housing sector. The paper explores the post-occupancy evaluation mechanisms used by housing associations delivering homes with traditional and MMC approaches. It argues that, alongside the digital and offsite transformation of housebuilding, the industry needs to reconsider the way customer feedback is collected and what purposes it serves. The paper argues that UK housebuilding in the social housing sector can benefit from re-purposing post-occupancy evaluation (POE) from only measuring customer satisfaction and detecting defects, which is currently the case, to using it to improve housing design and construction quality. This could be done by developing a systematic learning loop from residents of previous projects to the design, development, and construction teams across the housebuilding supply chain. It could particularly benefit housing associations pioneering MMC that, as long-term asset holders of developed houses, have a vested interest in improving the quality of homes and creating a better residential experience. The accumulated knowledge of such customer-centred approaches could also inform MMC technology development and help increase its uptake. However, as the paper further discusses, there are many challenges on the way to effective POE in social housing provision, including the nature of the MMC-based housebuilding supply chain and the industry's structural factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In Ethiopia a woman's identity is linked to her family and the prescribed gender role as a mother and home-maker, yet throughout Ethiopia's history there are examples of women [...]

Debates regarding research methodologies in construction, engineering and management (CEM) literature are long-standing. However, in the growing literature on offsite manufacturing (OSM), such debates are lacking and some studies conflate different components of research methodologies such as research design, methods, data sources, data types, and analytical techniques. This study examines the components of research methodologies reported in the OSM literature and how they compare with the established relationships between the key components of research methodologies. We analyse 74 articles on OSM sampled from 26 journals and find that quantitative methods, case studies, primary data, bibliometric database and modelling are the most preferred methodological approaches. The methodological components reported also cohere with established relationships between components of research methodology, other than the relationship between research methods and data sources. The findings reveal a growing hybridisation of research designs, data sources and analytical techniques, which suggests that methodological plurality is emerging in the OSM literature. This re-echoes concerns regarding the dominance of quantitative methods and the limited use of theory in CEM research, and consequently highlights the need for diversity in methodologies to expand knowledge boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]